A while back I made a post about online ethics and what would cause you to cross the line to ninja gear. Today I pose an interesting situation for your reading and discussion and I am eager to hear what you have to say. So let me tell you a story . . . and I will attempt to tell it as unbiased as possible because many of the people involved in this story are people who I really enjoy playing the game with, who’ve I had the opportunity of raiding with in the past.

With not awesome attendance, the guild wipes on content they’ve killed repeatedly. While hoping to save up attempts for some fantastic wipes on heroic Lich King, it is unfortunate that heroic Professor Putricide and heroic Sindragosa are being more difficult than they normally do. People are becoming frustrated because, as I said, this is content that has been cleared in a single night. To help maintain the guild’s sanity, the guild management decides to take the raid to Ruby Sanctum as the evening draws closer to an end.

The method of loot distribution warrants an explanation as well. The guild runs a sort of hybrid DKP and loot council method. Most items are given out by DKP blind bidding with DKP earned through a time-based system among other factors. However heroic tokens, weapons, and trinkets are distributed through an officer loot council.

This guild happened to have an abundance of Hunters. 5 to be exact, all with good attendance. As this raid zones into Ruby Sanctum, one member of that Hunter group states that the loot council decided 3 weeks ago that the next Sharpened Twilight Scale was going to one of the Warriors. More specifically, the super-geared Shadowmourne wielding Warrior who’s is also the Guild Master and member of the loot council. The Hunter who shared this would have been privy to this information because up until a week before, they had been an officer in the guild.

This obviously raised some ire among the Hunters, as they felt other people who also had great attendance and performed at a high level would benefit from this upgrade much more than a currently Armor Pen-capped Warrior. It wasn’t as if the Hunters thought it should to go themselves, but other members of the raid. All of this was hearsay at this point since they trash had not been cleared yet. As they moved through the instance, a few quips was made here and there until the boss fight came.

After a clean kill, lo and behold the trinket did actually drop. Now this was not the guild’s first Twilight Scale, but most people know how trinkets have a way of not dropping frequently. The Hunters waited for the loot council decision to see if this prophetic statement was true. Sure enough, the announcement was made that the aforementioned Warrior had indeed won the trinket through loot council decision.

This now caused statements to be made by some Hunters in raid chat, some more diplomatic than others. Things along the lines of:

– “Grats. 100% ArP and now you have more.”

– “I don’t see how all 5 loot council thought that was the best use of that upgrade.”

– “Yay, another ArP trinket while you have raiders who don’t even have one.”

Obviously this stirred some emotions. And as the madness continued, one of the Hunters, who started the public raid comments, was kicked from the guild. Following that, one of the other Hunters quit in the wake of the first one being remoed. By now, the rest of the raid was hoping it had spiraled into a joke. And when the Hunter who had originally made the statement about the predetermined loot also received a guild kick, that’s when people were concerned. Statements made in guild chat by leaders of the guild were defensive and almost hostile to a roster of guildies who had said nothing or hadn’t involved themselves in the situation.

We hadn’t killed Sindragosa on heroic this week, and we had been attempting to do so with 24 people. And the Hunters, in general, had fantastic raid attendance. The following response from the guild was mixed of “What the crap is going on” and some being apathetic.

Later discussions with the Warrior shed a different colored light on the situation. According to the Warrior guild master, the first Hunter to get kicked was a combination of how he handled the disagreement in combination with a history of having a bad attitude.

As far as predetermined loot, he said that was an outright lie. He, in fact, had supported me getting the trinket, while the other officers voted for him. Now while I don’t expect many loot council decisions in my favor as I only have 66% raid attendance as I cannot make Sunday raids, I appreciated the gesture. He explained the loot council didn’t find any of the other Hunters more deserving due to recent acquired by other Hunters in the form of heroic Zod’s among other things.

So in conclusion the situation we see is someone telling us that loot decisions were made a head of time, pushing the idea that the guild is merely a mechanism to fuel the beefy Warrior guild master. There isn’t really an argument that the upgrade, mathematically, would have been bigger for another raider. And on the other hand, we have the guild master saying that is not true and that the loot council decided it should go to him even with him voting for someone else. That the other Hunters had loot council decisions made in their favor recently. The subsequent guild kicks and guild quits were culmination of things building up.

So, is it a guild conspiracy or a series of events that happened to become unfortunate coincidences? Thoughts, comments, and how you would have handled the situation below.

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About Drotara

Drotara (or BehemothDan) considers himself a geek on many levels. A web developer and programmer by trade, he has no shortage of geeky hobbies. When not fulfilling husband and daddy duties, he enjoys WoW, the WoW TCG, Magic: The Gathering, and great board games with friends and family.

19 Comments

I’ll try to answer this from my perspective. I’m also a GM and I’ve had to handle similar cases. Generally, loot isn’t really decided ahead of time but there may be exceptions (Shadowmourne, or if all but 1 player class has a trinket).

So let’s analyze the situation.

Up for contention is a Warrior and an X number of hunters. I admit, I don’t know a lot about the DPS class so I don’t know who this trinket really benefits the most other than maybe Warriors, Hunters, Feral Druids and ROgues? (I think?)

So in my case, I would shift from best class model to reward model.

Who’s got a fairly high attendance rate? It looks like you mentioned all of them. So attendance does not strike anyone off the list.

Who has gotten loot recently within the past week or two and how much?

I think I read a hunter or two got a Zods or something? Or maybe I’m just hallucinating. Anyway, if any hunters DID get loot recently, I’d drop them on the priority list personally.

What is being replaced? Is there a significant ilevel (or just significant) upgrade? Is a hunter using a random 232 trinket or a War Token? Is one replacing a heroic DBW? Just a few questions to keep in mind.

Again, there isn’t enough information for me to come to a solid decision, but seeing as that trinket would drop again, I’d probably pass it off to a hunter JUST BECAUSE the warrior already has a Shadowmourne. Frankly, if you have a Shadowmourne or a Legendary, you can afford to wait a bit longer while the loot gets passed around (and yes, I practice what I preach . Compared to the rest of my guild members, I don’t have as many heroic items [sadface]).

But yeah, if that hunter was being a dick about it, he probably should’ve been let go a long time ago. Seems like he never agreed with the LC policy in the first place.

I have been an officer doing loot council for almost 3 years now, but it would be almost impossible to tell whether it’s a fair call without knowing.
1. The Trinkets of everyone involved.
2. The performance of everyone involved.
3. The attendance and attitude of everyone involved.

Without knowing all that it isn’t really possible to make any judgement call on the situation.

That’s fair. At the base level, attendance by the other 4 Hunters is pretty much 100% across the board with the Warrior having 100%. As far as performance goes, the Hunters are top 10, usually top 7, with the Warrior usually topping the meter.

As far as trinkets go, mine are terrible but as I said, I don’t expect trinkets due to low attendance on my part. The rest of them are of various quality, all 251 or better.

But yeah, there is not enough information for a complete 100% answer to the situation since there are unknown variables that went on behind the scenes we can only assume.

I find that this falls firmly in the world of bad PR and leadership decisions. It’s amazing how the right spin and clever handling can diffuse a situation.

The problem here originates with the volatile nature of a loot council. Councils are beneficial because a group of experienced players to make loot decisions to benefit the progress of the guild as a whole. Every member of the guild ratifies this decision by their participation in the guild. The councils purpose is to secure the best upgrades to players who will put them to best use; this fosters progression and avoids the somewhat arbitrary loot distribution that can result from DKP or other methods. The disadvantage is that guild members can often feel separated from the leadership, rather than united, as their fates are decided by a group of people who do not feel like peers but more like critics.

In this case, the decision of the loot council betrayed the guild trust. The selection of whom received the item was not made for the benefit of the guild as a group, but presumably as a reward to an individual. This motive of reward would not be so heinous, except that the recipient’s position on the council makes the transaction cronyism – deepening the gap between the council and the body of the guild.

The guild leadership made a bad decision. The benefit gained from honoring the guild master (no matter how deserving) was likely not worth the loss in the more abstract political currency. Furthermore, it seems that the situation escalated. You mention that the guild leaders said some disparaging things to other guild members who were not even involved in the exchange. This is even worse for the council’s reaction continued to lose them respect in the eyes of the guild with no benefit whatever.

Let’s face it – keeping a raiding guild together is a challenging feat in the best of circumstances. Often times, guild leaders are young 20-somethings who are selected more for their knowledge of the game than their leadership traits – in the words of Illidan, “[Many] are not prepared.” Your guild took a real hit; the guild leaders must now diligently reclaim the respect they formerly held or risk losing their guild altogether.

You know, that’s a point that I know has been discussed for years now. The idea that most guild leaders are indeed people who have taken the initiative to start a guild, excels at the game, but truly has no formal leader training or experience. Because despite what anyone says, leading a guild, especially an organized raiding guild, definitely takes leadership and direction.

And that is where you can ask yourself where the situation would have been different if there was an experience general manager or group leader? There are definitely real world skills that translate over to Azeroth and other virtual worlds.

I did get the feeling on Vent last night about people definitely hesitating about voices opinions or concerns after the events transpired. It will be interesting to find out how Sunday goes or what the following raid week will bring.

Whoever removed the first hunter from the guild is the one who is wrong here.

Regardless of who was deserving of the trinket for overall guild benefit or because of individual merit, kicking the dissenting members from the guild makes it seem like a Totalitarian rulership that will brook no argument, and as such is REALLY unwise to do. Whoever made the decision to do that turned what could have been a reasonable, logical discussion into a drama fest, and made the situation much, much worse. Kicking the supposedly wronged hunters just makes it seem like what they were saying is completely true. If I were an uninvolved party who witnessed this, I would be afraid to ever raise my voice or voice a disagreement lest I receive a /gkick for my opinion.

Also…what kind of terrible loot system is that? Why would you give someone who is arpen capped …more arpen, when others could use it? If a wand drops and the Loot Council thinks Johnny Rogue should have it, is that what happens? What a joke. The Loot Council FAILS for WASTING an item, and the warrior – even though he voted not to receive it – FAILS for accepting it.

That was a point that was sort of brought up as the events of the evening simmered down, regarding the ability to raise concerns. One officer commented that the issues should have been brought to the officers in a private Vent channel or through whispers rather than in raid chat.

And that in and of itself is a question. Should all issues like that be kept from the public’s eye and privately moderated or is it a valid method of recourse to make it know to the rest of the guild.

Passive 100% armor penetration is impossible without armor penetration gems, adding more armor penetration from the trinket allows the Fury Warrior to exchange armor penetration gems for strength gems (which is also more beneficial to a warrior than any single stat to a hunter). This means adding the trinket to the described warrior will add more overall raid damage output than giving it to anyone else, onless they had some similarly high gear level an abyssmal trinket.

Maybe the loot council Rawr’d everyone under consideration and the warrior showed the largest performance increase? (I doubt this occured.)

Correct or incorrect, thowing a snit over loot distribution this late in an expansion cycle is asinine. I am not certain how I would weigh encounter competence vs. a displayed willingness to disrupt an in-progress raid with incendiary comments intended to generate drama. I would not personally be inclined to keep someone like that in my raid roster.

Right now Fury is arguably the highest DPS class out there. Not only was this person clearly Fury, but they were wielding a legendary. Just because they’re on the top of the charts doesn’t mean they’re the best player in the raid nor will they make the most use out of the, probably, marginal upgrade.

Yeah they could drop a lot of ArP gems for Str gems, but I wouldn’t say they’re more beneficial to a warrior than any single stat for a hunter. If that were true then you’re also saying Hunter’s scale bad, Fury scaling is OP, or gems favor str and not Agi based specs. While Warrior DPS is high, I wouldn’t call it OP. Course I also wouldn’t complain if you called hunters underpowered.

And this really wasn’t about what loot this was over, so much as the circumstances that this occurred in. I would have zero interest in staying with a guild for the future if I felt they unjustly distributed loot, whether the issue was over a piece of loot to me or not. Just because we’re late in the expansion doesn’t mean events like this couldn’t occur in the future.

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The loot council members need to step forth again and approach the peons rationally. If people are bailing because they feel treated unfairly, then there’s probably others who feel the same way who haven’t jumped ship yet. Otherwise, they’ll probably have a situation where the core of the guild rots from within, sub-groups will form and you’ll end up with several people dropping out at a time. I’m not sure what was said aside from “4 of the 5 members voted for me and I voted for Drotara”, but I’m confident a lot more than that could have been said at the time.

Talking to the rest of the guild will hopefully get them to understand the decision. It would also be of interest to the GM to remove themself from the loot council, just to deter those kinds of remarks. There’s always going to be skeptics, and the GM can’t always decline loot because they’re the one leading the raids, nor should they get a special privilege towards loot just because they run the raids. You run the raid because you enjoy the micromanagement, not because you want dibs on the drops.

Redesigning the loot council to be composed of people who understand their and similar roles playstyle works would be best too. I mean such that trinkets like that are judged and ruled by X number of Rogues, Warriors, Hunters, DKs, Ferals and Rets. Meanwhile physical classes wouldn’t be making decisions on caster trinkets that drop too. I’m going to be honest that I don’t know much about the mage, lock and boomkin specs aside from the basics, I’m sure most of those in that loot council are in a similar position.

I’ve also met loot councils that talk about items publicly over vent, not through a specific channel or officer chat.

Being in a loot council guild is like leaving your car on the street for a day with the doors open and the engine running: you might meet some awesome guys who stop the engine, lock the door and hand the key over to the cops. But most probably your car goes missing.The trinket decision WAS pre-determined. Not surely in a sense that anyone told it loudly, but surely in a sense as it’s pre-determined that “if a lvl10 comes to me begging for 1g I will send him to hell”. It is my normal mentality and anyone knowing me can figure it out.The normal mentality of loot council is GM > officers > their buddies > rest of the raid. So a BiS warrior trinket goes to a warrior GM is pre-determined.I’m NOT saying that loot council is terrible. However unless you are one on the council, you should be happy with spoils. I mean the hunters surely got better trinkets than 95% of the WoW players. If one is happy with that, he can be happy in a loot council guild. The “vendortrash” of an ICC25HM guild is better than the “best drop ever” of a social guild. But the cost is being a second class citizen in the guild.

All I know is that as an ex-raid leader, distributing loot without stepping on too many toes (stepping on some toes every time is a given) was one of the biggest headaches of the job. Loot distribution is a balancing act between rewarding those who contribute the most in skill and time, gearing up specific players for guild progress, and still giving the non-elite players a dip in some decent loot. For being such a full-time thankless job, I can’t imagine myself ever going back to doing this. I did learn a great deal about human nature during my experience as raid-leader and guild officer, but unfortunately it actually does feel a lot like babysitting. Between settling petty conflicts between guild members, constantly justifying loot distribution for the betterment of the guild to “loot whores,” and begging people to dedicate hours a day a few times a week for a silly little game…you’d have to pay me a lot of real life cash for me to consider doing this again :P

I would believe that it was pre determined, If its important to enough people with a loot council, of course they have a fair idea who they want it to go to. Like who gets the next Shadow Mourn – I think the hunter that started it was at fault for sparking the debate, but would have everyone reacted the same had he not mentioned it? – It still wouldnt change that they would be confused over the decision when it would be more useful to others. Some things the loot council should know will cause contention, and this is why officers aren’t necessarily good people managers, – a simple. ” It was a hard decision, or even a small justification as to why this week it went to. *blah* Is not hand holding, its acknowledging that it might be a controversial decision – and probably would have gone a long way to ease any tension

I believe the loot council was in error, as it is their job to do the opposite of what happened. Loot councils are supposed to keep this drama from happening. The handling of this outside of raid shows the defensiveness of their actions. If someone is being defensive then there is something they are defending, it is human nature to defend our pride and the pride of the LC was being questioned. At the sametime if they brought this to a democracy then every piece of loot would be expected to be handled the democratic way, which defeats the purpose of a LC.

imo the Trinq would have better served the raid with another member on the verge of arp cap. Capping more than one raid memeber would have benefited the raid more then the small upgrade the warrior got. He gained maybe 2-3 gems from fractured to strength.

As to what class or raider “deserved” the trinq, not enough information was provided. But from the general info provided imo the guild would have benefited with another getting the trinq. I base this on the guild dps going up.

The Hunter that started the talk broke the trust that he had when he was an officer and had no business discussing these issues outside of that arena and deserved to get kicked. The timing was severely poor and should have been handled after discussion and emotions about this loot had subsided.

At times like this is when I am glad that my guild has never had issues with loot, we do open rolls, often people trading the loot after rolls. Most arguments are, you take it, no you take it. Many times we have traded loot to someone that would benefit the raid more. Ironically the warrior could have traded the trinq if he really felt that someone else “deserved” it. I have gotten many an item only to trade the upgrade away for benefit of the guild.

The fact that this issue was brought out in g chat and not discussed on the forums shows leadership failures. Never address an issue while your emotional, because your not thinking logically your thinking emotionally. This topic should have been addressed and mentioned that all those with an opinion would have a chance to be heard. Currently there is a HUGE gap between leadership and members that is not being addressed.

As previously posted the GM should remove himself from the council as this is a conflict of interest. Also the council should rotate members so the cronyism is removed as members change this would create balance and make raiders feel part of the process.

Loot should never be argued about as it is merely the end to the means. We only need better loot to kill harder bosses. Once the instances are cleared loot becomes epeen, if bosses die then loot is irrelevant.

Thank you for reaffirming my decision to be a social GM instead of a raider. My gear sucks, but drama = nofun = quit.
As a GM (albeit of a social guild whose members all know each other in RL) my opinion is that your GM messed up. He was on the raid, so should have seen the drama avalanche coming down and taken steps to deal with it. How? By overriding the loot council and giving that trinket to someone else, then kicking the former officer who was enciting the drama to start with. If done right, the guild wouldn’t be sure that the loot council had screwed up in the first place.
Stuff like this can kill a good guild faster than just about anything else, hope yours stays (mostly) together.

Guilds serious about raiding work best when run like a benevolent dictatorship, at least in my experience. In this situation, I think the loot council did make the mistake here. Firstly and most importantly, the item was a relatively tiny upgrade or even a sidegrade for all intents and purposes. Secondly, the loot council handled the dissent poorly.

No one should have to be punished for voicing their opinions in front of everyone else since it prevents dissent from brewing in whispers between the different cliques of a guild and makes the guild feel more cohesive. Obviously based on the officer’s suggestions of dissent being voiced through private channels, they aren’t so concerned about leading well as they are of their pride and reputations. Frankly, anyone that isn’t willing to handle being called to the floor for making a decision a certain way shouldn’t be in a position of power. The situation surrounding the decision should ideally have been explained calmly in raid chat so that everyone would see it. They should have then followed that up with an offer to let them voice their grievance, which the LC could then consider and calmly reassess whether X should get Y because of A, B, and C. If the whiners don’t like it, they can be reminded that they can always leave the guild. At least conducting themselves in that manner, the loot council will retain the trust of most of the guild. They might have made a mistake, but it would make them seem at least reasonable. Overall, they slipped too closely to a dictatorship and away from benevolence.

On a different note, the point of loot council is to give loot that benefits the *guild*. I really see absolutely no reason to give a decked out warrior with shadowmourne anything. Sure, I bet the guy is really pleasant, dependable, and sends birthday cards to everyone, but there reaches a point where it’s simply stupid to give him much of anything; that point is probably reached when you’re throwing armor pen trinkets to the armor pen capped warrior. He might really deserve it but it causes too many social problems.

i heard from a little birdie this, the council chose the war over the hunters because…

1. 3 of the 4 hunters were awarded items the night prior through council

2. 2 of the 4 hunters had attendance issues over the past month

3. the warrior had the highest possible dps upgrade from the trinket

on a side note. there are 5 hunters, they are going to be geared very slow because of that number. which i am sure why they became so hostile when they didnt win the council item from what i heard was a fair judgment.

you know.. one thing that bothers me…
the loot council aside (yes, they erred badly)…

the great warrior who voted for someone else to get the trinket…
if he was such a great person and didnt believe that he should get it..
why didnt he turn around and decide to give it to another.. one of the hunters.

he had 2 hours to do that (trade time for the loot)
so to me sounds like he was greedy himself and thus a poor leader.

on all sides (of the loot governors) everyone was culpable and deserved the drama they got.